Statement by Ibn Warraq on the World Trade Center Atrocity

Given the stupefying enormity of the acts of
barbarism of 11 September, moral outrage is appropriate
and justified, as are demands for punishment. But a
civilized society cannot permit blind attacks on all
those perceived as “Muslims” or Arabs.
Not all Muslims or all Arabs are terrorists. Nor
are they implicated in the horrendous events of Tuesday.
Police protection for individual Muslims, mosques and
other institutions must be increased.

However, to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is to wilfully ignore
the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. Without
Islam the long-term strategy and individual acts of
violence by Usama bin Laden and his followers make
little sense. The West needs to understand them in order
to be able to deal with them and avoid past mistakes. We
are confronted with Islamic
terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic
component. Westerners in general, and Americans in
particular, do not understand the passionate, religious,
and anti-western convictions of Islamic terrorists.
These God-intoxicated fanatics blindly throw away their
lives in return for the Paradise of Seventy Two Virgins
offered Muslim martyrs killed in the Holy War against
all infidels.

Jihad is “a religious war
with those who are unbelievers in the mission of the
Prophet Muhammad [the
Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty, established
in the Qur’an and in the Traditions as a divine
institution, and enjoined specially for the purpose of
advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims”[1].

The world is divided into two spheres, Dar
al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The latter, the Land of Warfare, is a country belonging
to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam. The Dar
al-Harb becomes the Dar-al
Islam, the Land of Islam, upon the promulgation of
the edicts of Islam. Thus the totalitarian nature of
Islam is nowhere more apparent than in the concept of Jihad, the Holy War, whose ultimate aim is to conquer the entire
world and submit it to the one true faith, to the law of
Allah. To Islam alone has been granted the truth: there
is no possibility of salvation outside it. Muslims must
fight and kill in the name of Allah.

We
read (IX. 5-6):“Kill those who join other gods with
God wherever you may find them”;

IV.76:
“Those who believe fight in the cause of God”;

VIII.39-42:“Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their
unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if
they return to it, they have already before them the
doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till
strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it
God’s.”

Those
who die fighting for the only true religion, Islam, will
be amply rewarded in the life to come:

IV.74:
“Let those who fight in the cause of God who barter
the life of this world for that which is to come; for
whoever fights on God’s path, whether he is killed or
triumphs, We will give him a handsome reward.”

What should we make with these further
unfortunate verses from the Qur’an:

It
is surely time for us who live in the West and enjoy
freedom of expression to examine unflinchingly and
unapologetically the tenets of these fanatics, including
the Qur’an which divinely sanctions violence. We
should unapologetically examine the life of the Prophet,
who was not above political assassinations, and who was
responsible for the massacre of the Jews.

“Ah, but
you are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The
Real Islam has nothing to do with violence,”
apologists of Islam argue.

There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam
itself is not moderate. There is no difference between
Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at most there is a
difference of degree but not of kind. All the tenets of
Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Qur’an,
the Sunna, and
the Hadith – Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct
derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and
defining texts of Islam. The fundamentalists, with
greater logic and coherence than so-called moderate or
liberal Muslims, have made Islam the basis of a radical
utopian ideology
that
aims to replace capitalism and democracy as the reigning
world system. Islamism accounts for the anti-American
hatred to be found in places far from the Arab-Israeli
conflict, like Nigeria and Afghanistan, demonstrating
that the Middle East conflict cannot
legitimately be used to explain this phenomenon
called Islamism. A Palestinian involved in the WTC
bombings would be seen as a martyr to the Palestinian
cause, but even more as a martyr to Islam.

“Ah,
but Islamic fundamentalism is like any other kind of
fundamentalism, one must not demonise it. It is the
result of political, social grievances. It must be
explained in terms of economics and not religion,” continue
the apologists of Islam.

There are enormous differences between Islamic
fundamentalism and any other kind of modern
fundamentalism. It is true that Hindu, Jewish, and
Christian fundamentalists have been responsible for acts
of violence, but these have been confined to particular
countries and regions. Islamic fundamentalism has global
aspirations: the submission of the entire world to the
all-embracing Shari’a,
Islamic Law, a fascist system of dictates designed to
control every single act of all individuals. Nor do
Hindus or Jews seek to convert the world to their
religion. Christians do indulge in proselytism but no
longer use acts of violence or international terrorism
to achieve their aims.

Only Islam treats non-believers as
inferior beings who are expendable in the drive to world
hegemony. Islam justifies any means to achieve the end
of establishing an Islamic world.

Islamic
fundamentalists recruit among
Muslim populations, they appeal to Islamic
religious symbols, and they motivate their recruits with
Islamic doctrine derived from the Qur’an. Economic poverty alone
cannot explain the phenomenon of Islamism. Poverty in
Brazil or Mexico has not resulted in Christian
fundamentalist acts of international terror. Islamists
are against what they see as western materialism itself.
Their choice is clear: Islam or jahiliyya.
The latter term is redefined to mean modern-style jahiliyya
of modern, democratic, industrialised societies of
Europe and America, where man is under the dominion of
man rather than Allah. They totally reject the values of
the West, which they feel are poisoning Islamic culture.
So, it is not
just a question of economics, but of an entirely
different worldview, which they wish to impose on the
whole world. Sayyid Qutb, the very influential Egyptian
Muslim thinker, said that “dominion
should be reverted to Allah alone, namely to Islam, that
holistic system He conferred upon men. An all-out
offensive, a jihad, should be waged against modernity so
that this moral rearmament could take place. The
ultimate objective is to re-establish the Kingdom of
Allah upon earth...”[2]

It
is surely time for moderate Muslims to stand up and be
counted. I should like to see them do three things:

All moderate Muslims should unequivocally denounce this barbarism,
should condemn it for what it is: the butchery of
innocent people,

2.
All moderate Muslim citizens of the United States should proclaim their
Americanness, their patriotism, and their solidarity
with the families of the victims. They should show their
pride in their country by giving blood and other aid to
victims and their families.

3.
All moderate Muslims should take this opportunity to examine the tenets
of their faith; should look at the Qur’an, recognize
its role in the instigation of religious violence, and
see it for what it is, a problematical human document
reflecting 7th or perhaps 8th
Century values which the West has largely
outgrown.

While
it should not be too difficult for moderate Muslims to
accept the need to denounce the violence of Terrorist
Tuesday, I am not at all optimistic about their courage
or willingness to proclaim their love for their chosen
country, the USA, or examine the Qur’an critically.

Too many Muslims are taught from an early
age that their first allegiance is to Islam. They are
exhorted in sermons in mosques, and in books by such
Muslim intellectuals as Dr Siddiqui of the Muslim
Institute in London, that if the laws of the land
conflict with any of the tenets of Islam, then they must
break the laws of the infidels, and only follow the Law
of God, the Shari’a,
Islamic Law.

It is a remarkable fact that at the time
of the Gulf War, a
high proportion of Muslims living in the West supported
Saddam Hussein. In the aftermath of the WTC terror, it
is now clear from reports in the media that many
Muslims, even
those living in the West, see these acts of barbarism as
acts of heroism; they give their unequivocal support to
their hero, Usama bin Laden.

Few
Muslims have shown themselves capable of scrutinising
their sacred text rationally. Indeed any criticism of
their religious tenets is taken as an insult to their
faith, for which so many Muslims seem ready to kill (as
in the Rushdie affair or the Taslima Nasreen affair).
Muslims seem to be unaware that the research of western
scholars concerning the existence of figures such as
Abraham, Isaac and Joseph or the authorship of the
Pentateuch applies directly to their belief system.
Furthermore, it is surely totally irrational to continue
to believe that the Qur’an is the word of God when the
slightest amount of rational thought will reveal that
the Qur’an contains words and passages addressed to
God (e.g. VI.104; VI.114; XVII.1; XXVII.91; LXXXI.15-29;
lxxxiv.16-19; etc.); or that it is full of historical errors
and inconsistencies.

Respect
for other cultures, for other values than our own, is a
hallmark of a civilised society.
But Multiculturalism is
based on some fundamental misconceptions. First, there
is the erroneous and sentimental belief that all
cultures, deep down, have the same values; or, at least,
if different, are equally worthy of respect. But the truth is that not all cultures have the same values,
and not all values are worthy of respect. There is
nothing sacrosanct about customs or cultural traditions:
they can change under criticism. After all, the
secularist values of the West are not much more than two
hundred years old.

If these other values are
destructive of our own cherished values, are we not
justified in fighting them both by intellectual means,
that is by reason and argument, and criticism, and by
legal means, by making sure the laws and constitution of
the country are respected by all?
It becomes a duty to defend those values that we
would live by. But here western intellectuals have sadly
failed in defending western values, such as rationalism,
social pluralism, human rights, the rule of law,
representative government, individualism (in the sense
that every individual counts, and no individual should
be sacrificed for some utopian future collective end),
freedom of expression, freedom of and from religion, the
rights of minorities, and so on..

Instead,
the so-called experts on Islam in western universities,
in the media, in the churches and even in government
bureaus have become apologists for Islam. They bear some
responsibility for creating an atmosphere little short
of intellectual terrorism where any criticism of Islam
is denounced as fascism, racism, or
“orientalism.” They bear some responsibility
for lulling the public into thinking that “The Islamic
Threat ” is a myth. It is our duty to fight this intellectual
terrorism. It is our duty to defend the values of
liberal democracy.

One
hopes that the U.S. government will not now act in such
a way that more innocent lives are lost, albeit on the
other side of the globe. One hopes that even now there
is a legal way out in international courts of law. The
situation is far more delicate and complex than a simple
battle between good and evil, the solution is not to
beat hell out of all Arabs and Muslims but neither is it
to pretend that Islam had nothing to do with it, for
that would be to bury one’s head in the Sands of Araby.